Reengineering ACOs for competition and better outcomes | Liz Fowler and Purva Rawal (ex-CMMI)

Purva Rawal and Liz Fowler, along with their co-authors, have written a several recent forefront articles in Health Affairs that are timely given all the attention to Medicare and MA right now. The one that’s been on our mind lately is “Reengineering ACOs to Make Medicare Competitive,” and we're excited to welcome them to share their thoughts on improvements to the program and recent developments like CMS’s Long-term Enhanced ACO Model (LEAD) and CMS Administered Risk Arrangements (CARA)

Additional Context
Chris Klomp, the Medicare Director, made an interesting comment at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference earlier this year, sharing that CMS wants two types of Medicare: 1. Original Medicare in accountable care relationships; 2. Medicare Advantage, with Klomp noting that they renamed the internal team at CMS from Fee for Service Medicare to Original Medicare last month as a symbol of the focus.

Medicare Advantage has been getting most of the attention in healthcare policy worlds after the jaw-dropping Advance Notice from CMS, but in Martin's opinion what’s going on with Accountable Care Organizations deserves more attention. While MedPAC and the Better Medicare Alliance argue about whether MA actually saves money, the Medicare Shared Savings Program has a consistent track-record of real, albeit modest, savings.